
Starmer has now reached Sunak-levels of unpopularity: how long can he last?
Even when that loyalty was fractured in an unprecedented and dramatic fashion – in the removal of Mrs Thatcher as leader in 1990 – the party quickly united behind the new leadership and pulled off an unlikely general election triumph in 1992 as a result.
But that mantle of loyalty, so fruitlessly squandered and devalued by a generation of Tory MPs in the last three decades, has now been handed to the Labour Party.
And as this Government's approval ratings plumb the depths of popularity that sealed Rishi Sunak's fate just before the electorate kicked him out of office, Keir Starmer is going to have to rely on party loyalty more than ever.
Consider this: until Jeremy Corbyn's arrival as Labour leader in 2015, no Labour leader had been formally challenged since 1988, when Tony Benn took a tilt at Neil Kinnock, who saw off the Left-wing upstart by securing nearly 90 per cent of the party's support.
The 2016 challenge to Corbyn occurred in unique circumstances and was the lesser of the radical solutions Labour MPs had considered in response to the hard Left's unforeseen takeover of the party. For the three decades between those two events, Labour leaders were considered untouchable.
And despite Starmer's many difficulties, that remains the case today. There are certainly plenty of MPs who would rather he resigned before the next election, allowing a more convincing successor to try to hold on to the party's governing majority; this would also allow the Prime Minister a chance to seize his place in history as only the second Labour Prime Minister to retire undefeated.
But there is zero chance of a formal challenge to his leadership. It's just not the done thing in the Labour Party, especially not to a man who has just won a three-figure majority from a position of near electoral extinction at the previous election. But that doesn't mean that there will be no briefing against him by malcontents, and also by apparently loyal ministers whose grievance is hidden behind a mask of loyalty.
The Parliamentary Labour Party is nervous. Well, of course it is. It would be weird if it were not. Languishing nearly ten points behind Reform in almost every poll is not the ideal place for any Government elected barely a year ago, albeit on a wave of apathy rather than enthusiasm. And so journalists eager for salacious gossip will listen attentively as unhappy backbenchers relate dreadful anecdotes about how unpopular the Government is on the doorsteps of their constituencies, and of how the antidote could be for Starmer to be replaced.
Much of this briefing will be done anonymously, some of it won't. The Liverpool MP Ian Byrne is not the shrinking violet that many of his colleagues are, and has been outspoken in his criticism of the Government.
What is less predictable is the end result of all this unhappiness. In the absence of a formal challenge to Starmer at this year's (or next year's) party conference, his detractors will be hoping that the polls will simply pile up too much bad news to withstand.
This is the Labour way, to cross one's fingers and hope for the best, rather than to plot any specific course of action. It's what happened under Gordon Brown, who never once looked in danger of winning the next general election, and who was constantly briefed against by MPs and cabinet colleagues in the forlorn hope he would stand aside and give the Government a fighting chance of re-election.
Will this summer's discontent produce a more substantial, not to say more electorally beneficial result? There are certainly plenty of Labour backbenchers who maintain a belief that Starmer can yet turn things around in time for the next election, though what this faith is based on remains unspecified.
But the eye-watering levels of disapproval revealed by the latest polling makes Starmer's position all the more vulnerable. Not only is he facing the public perception that he has no concrete principles of his own, and that he is too willing to reverse direction in the face of parliamentary rebellions from his own side.
He is also facing unprecedented rival challenges to his party's position as the country's chief recipient of Left-wing support. Aside from the imminent launch (or relaunch) of Jeremy Corbyn's new party, Starmer faces an erosion of his party's support from the Greens and even the Liberal Democrats.
All of this is in the context of an insurgent Right-wing party led by Nigel Farage that looks set to displace the Conservatives and present a real populist challenge to the political establishment.
Is Starmer up to the challenge? It is the key question that will be asked by Labour backbenchers and activists as the year draws to a close and the next set of local and devolved elections hove into view. Much of their judgment will await those results in May. Unless Starmer has plans to unveil a whole new side to his personality, one that reveals a previously hidden talent for strategic policy and communications, that judgment will be damning.
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